Ron presented on the Sustainable Westchester Clean Transportation Project, Electric Vehicles (EV), and EV Charging Stations to the Town of Ossining Board meeting on March 21st.

The Board voted to approve the Town’s $48,000 grant application for 3 new Electric Vehicle Charging Stations, plus another $5,000 grant that will cover the entire first year’s cost for a new leased EV. The Municipal Lease that EarthKind arranged for will result in spreading the dramatically discounted price of $22,000 for a new Nissan Leaf over 5 years – at zero interest!

While the federal government is backing away from the fuel economy standards that were driving a transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) – local municipalities are now joining together to lead the way. EarthKind is honored to be the Clean Transportation Project director for Sustainable Westchester’s EV program (http://sustainablewestchester.org/2016/08/electric-vehicles/). Nationally, we will be joining villages, towns, cities and counties who are creating $10+ Billion of demand.

Energy is on a similar path to the emergence of the internet in the 1990s.
We are on the verge of another

massive societal transformation, with the
“Enernet” emerging as a “dynamic, distributed, redundant and
multi-participant energy network built around clean energy generation,
storage and delivery – and serving as the foundation for smart cities.”

Nanogrids, microgrids, distributed energy resources, virtual power plants,
intelligent building materials, battery storage, smart lighting, new
networks and intelligence are driving down energy costs and improving
services. “From the enernet evolution will come smart cities that are an
order-of-magnitude smarter, healthier and safer. The new network will also
present quantum leaps in energy security and emergency resilience that can
stand in the face of superstorms or cyberattacks.”

Three massive battery storage plants—built by Tesla, AES Corp., and Altagas Ltd.—are all officially going live in southern California at about the same time. Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built. Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.

The time is almost here when intermittent renewable energy – from the sun or wind- will be stored in batteries and used to power Everything – all day & night long.

Solar energy installation capacity grew by 95% in 2016, with utility scale, residential and commercial solar all achieving record growth. Solar installations were 39% of all new 2016 electric capacity in the US, and wind energy 26%. Renewables were the majority of new capacity – blowing away new natural gas plants (29%).

While we have a long way to go, the exponential growth is creating a new paradigm of clean energy jobs – good for the economy, and great for the environment. Read Here!

The solar industry added a new solar job every 10 minutes last year, bringing the workforce to a whopping 260,000 U.S. solar jobs. More than a quarter million workers across all 50 states are busy building a better energy future for all of us. Solar is now the 2nd largest employer in the energy sector, employing more Americans than coal or natural gas. You can download the entire report here:

As the solar industry matures, we are beginning to see the emergence of new partnership models. The latest announcement is between National Grid – who owns an electric distribution utility in Massachusetts & upstate New York – and SunRun, one of the leading funders of residential solar installations in the country. As the article notes: “The partnership will also include research on how distributed energy resources can be aggregated to balance and optimize the grid, a service which is currently provided by centralized generators.” Read Here.